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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/24232864">On The Cusp</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/moonix/pseuds/moonix'>moonix</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>All For The Game - Nora Sakavic</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - No Exy (All For The Game), Alternate Universe - Psychics/Psionics, Chickens, Clairvoyance, Healing, Horoscopes, M/M, Ouija, Pining, Psychic Abilities, Psychic Andrew, Road Trips</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-05-17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-05-17</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-02 19:03:31</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>5,965</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/24232864</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/moonix/pseuds/moonix</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>Neil hires a psychic to hunt down clues about his dead mother. Andrew is just making shit up as he goes along.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Neil Josten/Andrew Minyard</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>49</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>454</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>On The Cusp</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><ul class="associations">
      <li>For <a href="https://archiveofourown.org/users/exybee/gifts">exybee</a>.</li>



    </ul><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>I am but a humble pickpocket, riffling through my friends' pockets for shiny ideas and then running away with them. This one I once again stole from Bee's brilliant mind, so it's only fair I dedicate it to her.</p>
<p>Vague warnings for past trauma and bad coping. To forestall confusion: Andrew is a Scorpio and Neil is a Capricorn.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <em>Scorpio: Just because it hurts doesn’t make it meaningful.</em>
</p>
<p>Andrew stared at the blinking cursor before stabbing his finger at the backspace key until only the flickering midnight white of the empty document remained. Darkness had swallowed his room whole, his screen the only source of light, but honestly it was better this way. All there was to see was the ransacked state that Andrew had left his apartment in earlier, the congealed mess of ramen and cheese in a cup by his elbow (not one of his best experiments, but also not one of his worst), and the purple bags under his eyes.</p>
<p>He buried his face in his arms and sighed. The night had got stuck in the doldrums between one day and the next, stretching on for miles around him. He was behind on rent again. The deadline for next week’s crappy horoscopes had come and gone and he still hadn’t produced anything. The base of his skull kept buzzing like a broken alarm clock, but there wasn’t anything Andrew could do about that. His premonitions had always been just that—on the cusp of some sort of revelation, a perpetual lingering on doorsteps. Wiping the mud from one’s feet but never crossing the threshold.</p>
<p>In short, they were completely useless, just like Andrew himself.</p>
<p>He dragged himself half upright, poked his chopsticks into the cold ramen and tried to swallow around a mouthful of limp, waxy noodles.</p>
<p><em>Capricorn</em>, he typed one-handed. <em>Stop looking over your shoulder for the people who used to love you. It is time to dust yourself off and move <strike>the fuck</strike> on.</em></p>
<p>There. That was something. Now he just had to do the other eleven. He glanced at the clock and riffled through the empty cans of energy drinks littered around his desk just in case there was still some left in any of them. Sleep was a conspiracy of the pharma industry, anyway.</p>
<p>He wrote two more, then clicked through a gnarl of pop-up windows, unwanted and bright, framing his screen like a dressing room mirror. He had two new e-mails, one titled ‘True Love Will Find You in the End’ which Andrew spent a moment contemplating on whether or not it was a euphemism—something about love fucking you in the ass sooner or later—and one titled ‘i need to talk to my dead mom’. Andrew snorted and was about to delete that one, but his computer was already fucked anyway, and the only alternative was going back to his horrible horoscopes.</p>
<p>Suspicious spam e-mail it was, then.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em><strong>From</strong>: Neil A. Josten neilabramjosten@jostech.com </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em><strong>To</strong>: Andrew Minyard cupnoodle@xoxomagazine.com</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em><strong>Subject</strong>: i need to talk to my dead mom</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>Hi,</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>I found you through my friend Allison, who follows your horoscopes religiously. I never used to believe in that crap but she makes me read them to her while she’s doing her nails and somehow yours are always spot on? Anyway, Allison—Allison Reynolds, that is—she got in touch with your editor who gave me your e-mail. You seem like a legit psychic and I need to talk to my mom who’s been dead for a year. I’ll pay whatever you charge.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>-Neil</em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>Andrew tapped his fingers against an empty takeout container, the Styrofoam bristling under his touch. He was going to tell this deluded kid to take his issues elsewhere, money be damned. His horoscopes were full of shit and Andrew was a legit psychic in the same way that three cats stacked inside a trench coat were a legit human. He clicked the reply button and waited for the page to load.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em><strong>From</strong>: Andrew Minyard cupnoodle@xoxomagazine.com</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em><strong>To</strong>: Neil A. Josten neilabramjosten@jostech.com</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em><strong>Subject</strong>: Re: i need to talk to my dead mom</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>whatever i charge?</em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <em><strong>From</strong>: Neil A. Josten neilabramjosten@jostech.com</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em><strong>To</strong>: Andrew Minyard cupnoodle@xoxomagazine.com </em>
</p>
<p>
  <em><strong>Subject</strong>: Re: Re: i need to talk to my dead mom</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>Within reason :)</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>-Neil</em>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>-</p>
<p>
  <em>Capricorn: You won’t find what you are looking for. But you will find something else.</em>
</p>
<p>“So,” Andrew’s latest wet dream in a flannel shirt said, tucking his beautiful hands into his pockets and rocking gently on the balls of his feet. “Will you do me?”</p>
<p>“What?” Andrew said, blinking himself out of a fantasy involving both the incredibly soft looking flannel shirt and the beautiful hands in question.</p>
<p>“Will you do it?” Neil repeated.</p>
<p>Andrew did not want to stage a stupid ass séance in his apartment, but even when his brain caught up his mouth was still stuck on a stuttery yes like a needle on a scratchy record.</p>
<p>“Great,” Neil said, smiling easily. He let his eyes drift around Andrew’s place, which Andrew had spent a frantic half hour cleaning up this morning before getting distracted by something else mid-scrubbing the fridge. Its contents were still strewn across the counter in the little kitchenette and Andrew tried to discreetly angle himself so Neil wouldn’t see.</p>
<p> “I brought her old Ouija board,” Neil went on, holding up his backpack. He pronounced it <em>weegee </em>which was somehow both endearing and annoying. “I thought it might help to use one she owned—not that she ever summoned any actual spirits with it, mind you. Except maybe the kind found in a bottle.”</p>
<p>Andrew dimly remembered Neil explaining that his mother had posed as a psychic, pretending to tell people’s fortunes and pass on messages from the dead in order to make a living. She and Neil had travelled the country for as long as Neil could remember, setting up camp wherever seemed promising and leaving again before any suspicions could arise.</p>
<p>Neil swiftly set the board up on the coffee table Andrew unearthed from beneath a pile of greasy pizza boxes and old yearbooks. He’d used up an entire red marker last night crossing out the people he’d hated in school, but satisfaction was like putting a glass to your lips only to discover it empty save for one last sugary drop. He swallowed down the bitter aftertaste, kicked the yearbooks under the table and sat on the floor.</p>
<p>“This isn’t really going to bring her back,” he pointed out, tapping the worn edge of the board.</p>
<p>“No, I know,” Neil said. The smile stumbled a little on its way out this time. “I just… I didn’t even get to say goodbye.”</p>
<p>He looked at Andrew. His eyes seemed to melt, sticky stuff everywhere like spilled soda.</p>
<p>“That’s bullshit,” Andrew said. Neil’s expression froze like a computer screen for a moment, then, pixel by pixel, came back alive, like he had to remind himself to do it.</p>
<p>“Fine,” he said, holding up his hands. “I have unfinished business with her, so sue me. Can we start?”</p>
<p>He placed the planchette down in the middle of the board. It was a heart-shaped piece of bone china and felt warm under Andrew’s skin when he wedged his finger in next to Neil’s.</p>
<p>The little crackle of static he felt when he rubbed his toes against the cheap carpet under the table was the only tangible reaction. His apartment still smelled like day-old food and the horrible scented candle he’d burned in a last-ditch effort to brighten up the place before Neil arrived. The light still sat in the corners like stale tea. The pipes gurgled away in the walls as his upstairs neighbour showered and the planchette remained firmly in place, slowly growing dewy with Andrew’s sweat.</p>
<p>“Mom,” Neil said, sucking in a deep breath, “I need to talk to you.”</p>
<p>He sat close enough that Andrew could smell the rain that had soaked his shoulders and the cuffs of his jeans. He had freckles dusted like cinnamon on the back of his hand, over his knuckles.</p>
<p>A pretty boy, Andrew thought. A pretty boy who was paying him a small fortune just to be scammed like his late mother had scammed her clients. Who was Andrew to judge?</p>
<p>Slowly, Andrew nudged the planchette in a random direction without looking at it.</p>
<p>“That’s an S,” Neil whispered, his finger pressed tightly to Andrew’s. “Do you see that? And… W… E… T… E-S-C… Escape… Sweet Escape? What is it, mom? Do you want me to go back there?”</p>
<p>Why not, Andrew figured. Whatever or wherever this sweet escape was, at least it would get Neil out of his apartment, and Andrew would finally be able to pay his rent. He gave the planchette a tiny rotation so that it pointed at ‘YES’.</p>
<p>“Oh,” Neil said, vibrating a little. “Okay. Mom, I…”</p>
<p>Andrew gave the planchette a dramatic little flick, making it shoot across the board at ‘NO’. It tumbled over the edge of the coffee table and disappeared in the depths of a heap of laundry Andrew had meant to stuff out of sight and forgotten about. He had a distinct feeling it was lodged inside some of his boxers.</p>
<p>“Well,” Neil said, staring after the planchette, “that was…”</p>
<p>“Complete garbage,” Andrew supplied.</p>
<p>“Amazing,” Neil said firmly. He looked at Andrew in that melty way again and Andrew scrounged for loose change in his mouth to steer the conversation elsewhere.</p>
<p>“What’s a sweet escape?”</p>
<p>“A camping ground near the mountains. We stayed there one summer when I was fifteen. Did some palm readings and stuff for the campers,” Neil said, then cheekily tacked on: “I kissed a boy behind the showers. My mom was not impressed.”</p>
<p>“Right,” Andrew said, neck running hot and cold in quick succession. “So, about the money…”</p>
<p>Neil pulled out his phone and typed for a moment. There was a dull chime and he slipped it back into his pocket.</p>
<p>“All paid. But, listen…”</p>
<p>Andrew crawled over to the pile of laundry and started digging around for Neil’s planchette. It was fine, he had his money, Neil had his clue, they would go their separate ways and Andrew had a few nice mental images to add to his spank bank. Really, it was more than he could have hoped for. He’d have to send his editor a thank-you note. In the form of a bottle of wine, probably.</p>
<p>“…what do you think?”</p>
<p>Andrew emerged with the planchette in one hand and a lone sock dangling from his elbow.</p>
<p>“What?”</p>
<p>“Do you want to come with me?” Neil asked. “I could use the spiritual guidance, and I’m assuming you could use the money.”</p>
<p>Andrew wanted to laugh, but the sound tasted flat and sour on his tongue like day-old soda. He should say no. If Neil wanted to hunt non-existent ghosts, that was on him. Andrew couldn’t even guide his head through the collar of a t-shirt without getting stuck, let alone any spirits.</p>
<p>The back of his neck prickled hotly again. His gaze slid over to where he’d absent-mindedly filled his old gym bag with clothes some time last night just to pass the dead hour between two and three in the morning.</p>
<p>Fuck.</p>
<p>“Fine,” he sighed, scratching at the back of his neck until the heat stopped feeling like a phantom touch. “But you’re paying extra for travel expenses.”</p>
<p>“Sure,” Neil said easily, shaking the sleeve of his flannel shirt from his wrist to look at his watch. “I’ll pick you up in… let’s say, two hours? We should make good time if we drive through the night.”</p>
<p>-</p>
<p>
  <em>Scorpio: Hating your emotions will not make them go away.</em>
</p>
<p>Andrew prepared for the journey by jerking off furiously in the shower and then armouring himself in the stompiest boots he owned, the slouchiest hoodie he could find, and the bulkiest bomber jacket he’d stolen from some nameless, faceless foster kid before leaving yet another house for yet another reason. The hoodie had the cracked neon orange logo of a ramen shop printed on the back that had long since closed down and a row of kanji down the sleeves that Andrew was pretty sure spelled something random like Hope Journey Soup Chicken. Andrew could relate: he felt like a randomly chosen collection of peeling brushstrokes that had lost all meaning.</p>
<p>He shoved the stuff on his counter back in the fridge, ignoring the mould that was growing in some of the jars like disembodied eyes following his every move. Then he sent off a quick e-mail to his editor, chanted “Keys, keys, keys,” under his breath as he grabbed his bag, his wallet and his phone, picked up a box of condoms then tossed it down again when he saw that they were expired, and slammed the door shut behind him.</p>
<p>“Crap,” he muttered, patting himself down for the keys which were snugly inside the apartment. He tried to pry the door open but it wouldn’t budge—not that anyone would willingly break into this shithole, anyway. It was probably fine.</p>
<p>Probably.</p>
<p>Deciding that future Andrew could deal with this problem, he went down the steps and nearly ran into Neil, who was on his way up.</p>
<p>“Oh, hey,” Neil said, hair fizzing over a pair of dark red sunglasses perched on his head. “I was just coming to get you. All packed?”</p>
<p>“Yup,” Andrew said. For a second they just looked at each other, Andrew teetering on the top step, for once in his life taller than someone, and Neil with his hands in his pockets, rocking on the balls of his feet, bright white sneakers looking radioactive in the dirty gloom.</p>
<p>They went downstairs. Neil’s car was another wet dream, a glossy, old-timey thing that was clearly pampered and spoiled like a baby.</p>
<p>“You like it?” Neil grinned. “I tinker with stuff in my free time. Old computers, radios, VCR players, cars… whatever I can get my hands on.”</p>
<p>Boys, Andrew wanted to ask but didn’t.</p>
<p>Evening was settling on the city like dust. The streets were a fuzzy denim blue, studded with red and orange jewels. Neil played something on the radio, a beat that spun on and on and on as the miles rolled away beneath them, one elbow propped on the open window. He sang along every now and then, his voice like a patch of stinging nettles Andrew kept stepping in, needling into his every thought. He was beautiful in the dying light, with the breeze ruffling his hair, beautiful like a window to jump from, like a river to drown in.</p>
<p>Once they’d pushed past the last little ring of resistance of the city’s perimeter and were flying down the empty highway, a threadbare indigo sky stretching above them, Neil started talking about his mother. Andrew listened, because what else was he going to do, with a beautiful deadly boy in the driver’s seat of this car, the driver’s seat of Andrew’s life for one night.</p>
<p>It was enough. It was more than. It was like treating himself to a full meal after weeks of instant noodles and coffee, and Andrew gorged himself on it until he felt like he was going to throw up.</p>
<p>“So, what about you?” Neil said after a pause. He’d rolled up the window and he was still wearing the sunglasses pushed up into his hair. The radio crooned.</p>
<p>“Oh, you know,” Andrew said, turning his hand until the bones in his wrist crunched.</p>
<p>“I really don’t,” Neil said. “Tell me everything.”</p>
<p>So Andrew told him. Because what else was he going to do.</p>
<p>He told him everything that could be told in words—about growing up, about growing down, about the yearbooks and the jobs and the mothers that had never been his. About his plan for the zombie apocalypse and the craving for sour apple gummy rings that never really left him. About Aaron.</p>
<p>Neil wasn’t starved like him, but he sipped Andrew’s words like a glass of cold milk, like they weren’t completely devoid of nutrients after years of sitting in the dark.</p>
<p>They stopped at a gas station, stepped out into the dry-hot desert air and buzzing neon light. Andrew could hear the faint rumble of distant traffic, like cigarette smoke from a neighbour’s window. Neil stretched and jogged around the parking lot, drawing dizzying circles around Andrew like a moth, closer and closer until Andrew could smell the tang of his sweat mixed with the sweet gasoline scent of the night around him.</p>
<p>“What do you want?” Neil asked, pushing through the glass door into the store. Andrew was hit with a blast of cold air from the air conditioning as he followed, but Neil was already lost down the aisles. Only his voice had stayed behind like a lit-up exit sign, beckoning Andrew deeper.</p>
<p>“Is that all?” Neil said when Andrew finally found him, arms full of primary colours. Andrew looked down at his bag of chips and Neil said “Here” and “Open up” and dumped his lot in Andrew’s hands, things sliding to the floor in a hurry before Neil picked them up and stacked them back on top more carefully.</p>
<p>
  <em>Open up.</em>
</p>
<p>Andrew thought about it, having Neil crack him wide open like an oyster and pull him out with his teeth. Neil, licking at his slimy, squirmy insides, drinking his salty liquor and swallowing him whole. Neil, satisfied.</p>
<p>Except it would never be like that, would it?</p>
<p>Andrew, a spider, folding his limbs in over his body in his death throes, impenetrable. Hoping against hope that no one would go to the trouble of pulling them out, one by one, exposing the body beneath.</p>
<p>Neil paid for the food. Andrew dumped it into the back seat, a small avalanche of shiny foil and salt and sugar and grease. He grabbed a few bags at random and got back into the passenger seat, took the cup of coffee Neil handed him, tore a package open with his teeth.</p>
<p>There. Better.</p>
<p>He reached out to change the radio station, switching numbly through the wavelengths, snatches of music or conversation whirling around them like dust bunnies.</p>
<p>“…assaulted by a lost chicken,” a male voice chuckled before dipping back below the surface.</p>
<p>“…see a familiar face,” another one said. Andrew dunked it under with the rest.</p>
<p>“…bones…”</p>
<p>“…and an egg.”</p>
<p>His arm was starting to grow tired, so he left whatever station came up next. Something mournful and bluesy, notes twanging and sloshing around, ghosts on an empty road.</p>
<p>He fell asleep. Dreamt of oysters and spiders and Something Else, like the white, bushy tail of a rabbit flashing always out of reach, zigzagging at the edge of his vision. As he reached out his hand to catch it at last, he fell out of the dream headfirst and into a bleary morning, Neil’s singing drifting in through the open window where he was doing handstands outside.</p>
<p>“Fuck,” Andrew rasped, flexing fingers that felt like they’d been grasping all night. They were parked outside a dusty diner, the smell of fried breakfast food wafting from the door. Mouth watering, Andrew pried himself out of his seat and tumbled out of the car, readjusting his beanie hat.</p>
<p>Neil’s body in the morning sun. He looked squeaky clean and fresh, had changed into a new shirt, sunglasses dripping off his nose and hips swaying to a song as he turned himself right-side up again.</p>
<p>“Morning!” he chirped. “We’re almost there, but I thought you might want breakfast first.”</p>
<p>Andrew croaked something and plodded over to the diner. It was warm inside, steam rising in thick puffs from the coffee pots, mindless music running in the background. The table had a chequered wax tablecloth and a cheery plastic flower, the laminated menu was stained with smears of ketchup. He ordered waffles with maple syrup and bacon, pushed coffee down his throat until he’d swallowed all the grit that was stuck in it, drowned himself in syrup, thought about going to the bathroom and didn’t. It was good just to sit, for now. To sit and drink coffee and look and watch.</p>
<p>Neil let him drive the last leg of the journey. The mountains knelt, blue and still, at the end of the road, waiting for them. By midday, Neil pointed at a wooden sign leading off through sparse trees: <em>Sweet Escape</em>. Someone had turned the second e into an a and weeds grew wild around the post.</p>
<p>The camping ground was deserted. There were still markers of the people that had come and gone; the discoloured grass where camping vans had once stood, the paths worn into the ground by the feet of habit. Neil walked around, touching trees and abandoned camping furniture, staring out over the glittering trickle that might have been a stream in the past. Andrew saw his mouth twitch like a mosquito when he saw the old shower hut.</p>
<p>“Come here for a moment,” Neil called out, already slipping into the building. Inside was humid, as if someone had just showered mere moments ago, the pipes rusty, the tiles cracked and pockmarked with grout. Andrew saw himself in the last remaining mirror, smudged and tired, his eyes tarnished in the pale blond light.</p>
<p>“Here,” Neil whispered from somewhere inside the maze of stalls.</p>
<p>“Is this where you kissed that boy,” Andrew murmured, peering around a partition. Neil was leaning against the wall just underneath a window, a sunbeam splitting his face clean in two.</p>
<p>“Maybe this is where I’ll kiss you,” he said, a tacky question mark at the end like the imprint of lips on the rim of a glass.</p>
<p>Andrew swallowed, dry and thick. Thought about it. Neil pressing him up against that wall. His wrists. One leg between. Heart in his throat, no, higher; in the back of his mouth like bile. Shaking. No one around for miles.</p>
<p>A squawk drew their attention back to the entrance. Neil pushed past him and crouched, his voice a tuft of meringue: <em>pspspspsps, it’s alright, come here, it’s okay</em>.</p>
<p>It was a chicken.</p>
<p>She was brown and plump, with gnarled feet and keen eyes. Neil held a hand out to her and she came, in slow meandering circles, and let herself be plopped into his lap and held.</p>
<p>“Isn’t she beautiful?” he murmured.</p>
<p>The chicken clucked softly, as if to say, “Duh.”</p>
<p>“My mother stole one from a farmer once,” Neil said. “We had fresh eggs for weeks. Then we left and couldn’t take her with us, so my mom took her outside and snapped her neck and made soup.”</p>
<p>“Maybe this is the ghost of that chicken,” Andrew joked. Neil frowned and peered down at the hen, who looked squat and cosy in his lap.</p>
<p>“You’re right,” he said, reverently. “Maybe she is. Maybe my mom sent her here, as a sign.”</p>
<p>“A sign for what?” Andrew asked.</p>
<p>Neil didn’t answer. He stared out at the abandoned campground, the wind whisking through the dead grass, the paltry wildflowers.</p>
<p>“I think we should take her with us,” he said.</p>
<p>“With us where?”</p>
<p>“I don’t know yet. But I have a feeling this journey isn’t done yet.” Neil got up, cradling the chicken in his arms. “Come on, let’s get back to the car.”</p>
<p>-</p>
<p>
  <em>Capricorn: Not all signs are a sign. Finding out which ones are is a pain <strike>in the ass</strike>.</em>
</p>
<p>“Ouija,” Neil said, except he still said it like: <em>weegee</em>.</p>
<p>“Ouija,” Andrew repeated. <em>Wee-jay</em>. “You want to name the chicken Ouija.”</p>
<p>“Isn’t it perfect?” Neil gushed, stroking the chicken’s head. “Give me the road atlas.”</p>
<p>Andrew handed it over, and Neil laid it flat on the ground, then put Ouija down beside it.</p>
<p>“Where should we go next, Ouija?”</p>
<p>The chicken bobbed her head and scratched at the ground, looking for more of the corn chips Neil had fed her earlier. She took a step forward, pecking at the atlas, and Neil pinned the place she’d marked with his finger.</p>
<p>“Betelgeuse,” he said. “That’s not far from here.”</p>
<p>“About 640 light years, give or take,” Andrew said.</p>
<p>“No, silly,” Neil snorted, settling the chicken into a box he’d found in the trunk of his car and lined with his flannel shirt and some bits of grass and wildflowers and corn chips. “It’s a trailer park south of the mountains. Another day’s drive, maybe.”</p>
<p>He packed up the little gas cooker they’d used to heat water for instant noodles. The sun had ripened, from yellow transparent to summer wheat to sour cherries, the light a treacly residue on the inside of Andrew’s eyelids. All around them, a choir of cicadas; a rush of them. Butterflies bobbed and trembled, bees circled fruit that lay rotting in the grass around the trees where nobody had picked it. Neil disappeared to relieve himself behind one of them and came back with an armful of apples, a soft crunch as he bit into one, juice dripping down his chin.</p>
<p>Andrew breathed in the spiced summer air and thought of his sour apartment. Felt sweat tickle the back of his neck; or maybe not sweat. Maybe something else.</p>
<p>“Betelgeuse, then,” he said, giving in.</p>
<p>-</p>
<p>
  <em>Scorpio: Even the best-tasting fruit rots if no one picks it.</em>
</p>
<p>They took turns driving through the night. The radio crackled with static. Ouija the chicken slept in her box, snoring slightly, oblivious to the miles pounding past beneath her feet. The sound reminded Andrew of a cat’s purr.</p>
<p>Betelgeuse lay pale and shivering in the morning light when they arrived. Neil was still dozing in the passenger seat and Andrew let him sleep, putting his feet up on the steering wheel and watching the sun creep over the mountains. He thought about how Aaron liked his coffee—strong, with a slow glug of condensed milk and a pinch of vanilla—and the salted coconut bars Nicky always made for their birthday, their chewy consistency, sweet and salty and rich on his tongue.</p>
<p>He hadn’t talked to either of them in almost two years.</p>
<p>He shivered in the dewy damp chill of the morning. His skin felt the ghost of long-gone hands that hadn’t asked for permission and he pulled his beanie hat low over his ears and his sleeves down over his hands to ward them off.</p>
<p>There was some scrabbling and clucking in the box on the back seat. Neil looked groggy as he blinked himself awake, like his eyes were spun in spiderwebs. Andrew handed him a bottle of water and watched the bob of his Adam’s apple as he drank.</p>
<p>Neil picked Ouija up and let her waddle around in the damp grass outside. Everything was greener here, more saturated. They walked aimlessly through the quiet rows of trailers, past sleepy dogs and dozing cats.</p>
<p>Then, a voice in the air, like stepping in a puddle.</p>
<p>“Nathaniel?”</p>
<p>It sounded oddly faded and scratchy, aged. Neil twisted around and gasped, then tugged on Andrew’s sleeve and led him over to an older man with thin grey hair standing in the mouth of a trailer, wearing a tartan bathrobe and fluffy slippers.</p>
<p>“Uncle Stuart,” Neil said. “I didn’t know you lived here now.”</p>
<p>Stuart’s lips creased into a weak smile.</p>
<p>“Everyone has to settle down some time,” he said.</p>
<p>“Except my mother,” Neil replied wryly.</p>
<p>“Well,” Stuart said, rocking his head from side to side. “Why don’t you come in? And your friend. I’ve got tea, and some seeds for the chicken.”</p>
<p>Andrew spun around and found that Ouija had followed them. She looked up at him with beady yellow eyes, then she marched smack dab into Stuart’s vegetable patch and started pulling out herbs with her beak.</p>
<p>The trailer was cramped and cluttered. There was an old-fashioned tea kettle, whistling fat steam as it boiled, and Stuart stirred a spoonful of sugar and a dollop of cream into each mug before handing them over. Neil sat at the small folding table with his hands clasped around his mug as if in prayer.</p>
<p>“Can you tell me about her?” he asked, head bowed over his tea, breathing in the steam. Reverent.</p>
<p>Stuart chuckled.</p>
<p>“You probably remember her better than me.”</p>
<p>“I don’t know what she was like before,” Neil said. “Before me.”</p>
<p>Stuart’s face softened and he set down his tea. Got up to pull something from a box underneath the messy bed and handed it to Neil before busying himself at the toaster.</p>
<p>It was a photo album. Old, yellowed. A crackling sound as he opened it, pulled apart the pages with trembling fingers. Andrew imagined being pulled apart that tenderly; shut it down.</p>
<p>“She looks so young and carefree,” Neil murmured, running a finger down a faded photograph of a smiling, gap-toothed girl with a dog. “Not like… She was such a hard woman, you know?”</p>
<p>Stuart cleared his throat over the scrape of the knife, buttering the toast in quick, business-like swipes. Andrew’s leg kept bouncing, hitting the underside of the table. He felt jittery. Like he’d had too much coffee. Like he had to pee really, really badly.</p>
<p>He stood up, knocking his knee on the table one more time.</p>
<p>“I’m going to check on Ouija,” he mumbled, not really caring if they heard; Neil was too engrossed in the photos anyway. He stumbled outside, sat on the steps, breathed. The garden smelled like wild fennel and lavender. The sun had pinkened in the sky.</p>
<p>He watched Ouija dig worms from the soft earth until Neil came out to tell him that they were welcome to stay for lunch, that Andrew could take a shower in the tiny cabin if he wanted. The water was cold, the soap felt rough against his skin, but when he came out, dressed in clothes Neil had handed him through the door, he felt cleaner than he had in a long time.</p>
<p>“So, we have a new lead,” Neil said over some kind of root vegetable pie. It was piled with fluffy mashed potatoes and fresh chives and tasted rich and bitter with mushrooms, sage and rosemary. Andrew couldn’t remember the last time he’d eaten a homecooked meal. If he ever had.</p>
<p>“His name is all I can tell you, I’m afraid,” Stuart said. “That’s all she ever told me.”</p>
<p>“It’s more than she told me,” Neil muttered, stabbing a parsnip and swirling it through the mash.</p>
<p>“His?” Andrew asked. He was mopping the last of the sauce up with a piece of bread. It was slightly stale, yet still better than anything he had tasted in months.</p>
<p>“My father’s,” Neil said. “Nathan Wesninski.”</p>
<p>Andrew swallowed around the last bite of bread and nearly gagged. The taste of grave dirt was sudden and heavy on his tongue, filling his nostrils and burying his lungs.</p>
<p>-</p>
<p>
  <em>Capricorn: Sometimes you have to run away to come home.</em>
</p>
<p>“I’m sorry,” Neil chanted, forcing another bottle of water on him. “I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry.”</p>
<p>Andrew coughed the last of the phantom taste up and sipped more water, exhausted.</p>
<p>“What is the point,” he panted, his voice raw and painful, his eyes streaming. “What’s the point. I still have to pay taxes. I still want things.”</p>
<p>“No, listen, no,” Neil was saying, holding him up. Did he need to be held? He felt deeply rooted, too heavy to move. Neil’s car smelled like old leather and hay and those horrible smoked paprika chips they’d bought at the gas station. “It’s not useless. You’re not useless. I wouldn’t even have known that he was dead without you. I wouldn’t even have come here without you.”</p>
<p>“No, that was Ouija’s fault,” Andrew muttered.</p>
<p>“And you led me to her,” Neil said, looking over his shoulder to where Ouija was in the process of creeping up on one of the trailer park cats. “If anything, you found a home for a lost chicken. You made her happy. Look at her! That has to count for something.”</p>
<p>
  <em>For something.</em>
</p>
<p>There were still all the things that couldn’t be said, roiling in Andrew’s stomach like indigestion. The words were there, of course. Fruit not picked. Rotting in the grass, in Andrew’s stomach. But how could he touch them without getting stung by the wasps?</p>
<p>“Hey,” Neil whispered, tugging. Just a little tug, and Andrew was falling, falling forward until he was nestled against the protective barrier of Neil’s shoulder.</p>
<p>Did he need to be held?</p>
<p>He didn’t know. Didn’t know if he’d ever been held.</p>
<p>“Did you really want to kiss me,” Andrew murmured into the soft fabric of Neil’s shirt. Inhaled the soapy, light, buzzing smell of him.</p>
<p>“I still do,” Neil said.</p>
<p>“Liar,” Andrew huffed. His eyes felt sticky. He’d been clean, once. Untouched. He must have been. Or else what was the point?</p>
<p>“It’s the truth,” Neil hummed, rubbing his shoulder. “I don’t care if you’re a mess. We’re in this together now, aren’t we? So let’s finish it.”</p>
<p>His apartment. The endless night shifts. Getting drunk occasionally and sucking Kevin off in the bathroom at Eden’s even though it was always supposed to be the last time he did this and yet, never was. Coming and crying. Watching cooking shows yet never cooking. Watching porn and being scared to be kissed. To be unravelled by a touch.</p>
<p>To yearn. Yet never to have.</p>
<p>“Fuck,” Andrew whispered. A glistening snail’s trail of snot on Neil’s t-shirt. He pushed himself off, wiped his face on his sleeve. The fucking kanji.</p>
<p>Hope.</p>
<p>Hope could go fuck itself.</p>
<p>“The Last Hope,” he said, shivering as the cold fingertips of a premonition danced down his spine, from the top of his head to the base of his back. “It’s a cemetery, just around the block from where I live.”</p>
<p>“Fuck,” Neil hissed. “Right. Back where we started.”</p>
<p>They drove, Neil wired behind the wheel, Andrew tapping his fingers like tapping ash off a cigarette. Tap tap tap. Bye bye bye.</p>
<p>“Tell me something,” Neil demanded. “Anything.”</p>
<p>“Amigurumi is the art of crocheting small stuffed yarn creatures,” Andrew said. “The smaller the better.”</p>
<p>And: “I still have them added on Facebook. I should message them. Probably.”</p>
<p>And: “I remember everything, except that. Isn’t that fucked up? The one thing that’s important. And it’s not there. Sliced clean out of my mind. Forever.”</p>
<p>And: “Do you think Ouija will remember us?”</p>
<p>And: “We’re here.”</p>
<p>They hadn’t slept, not really. When Andrew drove, Neil had been curled up in the backseat, eyes open, mouth set. Andrew hadn’t even tried. They entered the cemetery through the creaking gate and went down the rows, and when they found it, Neil pulled out his phone and typed in his name.</p>
<p>He sat down in the grass.</p>
<p>“Oh,” he said. “Oh.”</p>
<p>There was a picture.</p>
<p>The man in the picture looked just like him. Older, colder. But him.</p>
<p>“Now I know. Why she hated me so much.”</p>
<p>-</p>
<p>
  <em>Scorpio: There is always <strike>fucking</strike> hope. <strike>And if not, there is still chicken soup</strike></em>
</p>
<p>In the end, Andrew drove him home. Tucked him into bed. Walked all the way back to his own stale apartment and fell face first into sleep, didn’t surface for twelve hours straight, woke gasping and clawing at the non-existent weight of a chicken sitting right on his chest.</p>
<p>He showered. Felt dirty again.</p>
<p>Threw open the windows and squeezed his eyes shut against the sunshine and then opened them wide, welcoming the pain. He emptied the fridge, methodically throwing everything away. Collected all the trash in the apartment. Got sidetracked. Did two loads of laundry. Came back.</p>
<p>He found a book he’d borrowed from Kevin months ago and laughed. He found a shirt that had once been Aaron’s and pulled it on, looked at himself in the mirror. Was that how he looked now?</p>
<p>The deadline for the next batch of horoscopes rose up like a ghost from a grave. Andrew sat down at his desk and typed:</p>
<p>
  <em>Capricorn: You are not the ghost of your father.</em>
</p>
<p>
  <em>Scorpio: Talk to him.</em>
</p>
  </div><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_foot_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff"><p>For the record, I am not sure if you should feed corn chips to chickens. So maybe don't, lmao. But DO look up snoring chickens I implore you that about made my day.</p>
<p>Love kudos n comments n telepathic love letters but above all do me a favour and look out for your funky precious selves.</p></blockquote></div></div>
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